Near Miss, Again — Well, Maybe Not

September 8, 2014

paintball-asteroid-0Another damp, foggy morning on California’s north coast as Monday starts another round of life — and a still-odd sense being in a “retired” state of mind.
Mondays ain’t the same without no job.

My insomnia is still with me, though, and I endured a long night’s journey to daylight to get here. Although I did get enough sleep overall, the three-hour hole does do an emotional number on my brain. Not much up there anyway, so really no big deal.

Instead, how about an asteroid earth strike?

(Illustration: ‘An artist’s concept of the asteroid Apophis (Image ESA),’ found here)

Yesterday afternoon, Asteroid 2014 RC supposedly whipped safely pass earth (I posted about it on Saturday) and out into the void of space. However, ‘safely’ might be a too-easy word.
The rock was about 60 feet in diameter — about the same size as the asteroid that blasted over Chelyabinsk, Russia last year (about house-sized) — and again this time around, most-likely a bit of the asteroid might have fallen onto hard ground.
Via the Daily Mail:

A mysterious explosion that rocked Nicaragua on Saturday night, creating a 39ft-wide (12 metre) crater, appears to have been caused by a small meteorite.
And authorities in the region believe the meteorite was in fact a shard of rock from the 2014 RC ‘pitbull’ asteroid that soared past Earth over the weekend.
The impact, close to the country’s international airport, did not cause any known injuries, but the hit was powerful enough to be felt throughout the capital, according to reports.
Tests are now being carried out on the crater to learn more about how it was formed.
“We are convinced that this was a meteorite. We have seen the crater from the impact,” said Wilfredo Strauss of the Seismic Institute.
The Nicaraguan authorities continued that the timing of the impact fits closely with the passing of the [‘pitbull’] asteroid, which passed very close to Earth on Sunday.
A meteorite was also spotted flying over Spain on Sunday evening, and astrophysicists are trying to determine if the two events are related.

You can see two waves: first, a small seismic wave when the meteorite hit earth, and then another stronger one, which is the impact of the sound,’ Mr Strauss continued.
Government officials and experts visited the impact site on Sunday.
One of them, William Martinez, said it was not yet clear if the meteorite burned up completely or if it had been blasted into the soil.
“You can see mirror-like spots on the sides of the crater from where the meteorite power-scraped the walls,” Martinez said.
Dr. Dan Brown, an astronomy expert at Nottingham Trent University, told MailOnline: “The possible meteorite impact in Nicaragua, linked with the asteroid 2014 RC which flew by Earth last night, raises some interesting questions.
“Although the impact occurred roughly 12 hours before the asteroid passed Earth, that part of the planet was facing in the right direction for it to have been a fragment associated with it.
“If it was an unrelated object, however, then it further demonstrates how we don’t really monitor all the potentially dangerous rocks out there.”
Government spokeswoman, First Lady Rosario Murillo, said Managua would be in contact with the US Geological Service to try to get more information about ‘this fascinating event’ in the Central American nation, one of Latin America’s poorest countries.

Mankind doesn’t really know what they’re doing — always a a three-hour hole of some kind.
Does remind one of George Carlin’s Al Sleet: “The radar is picking up a line of thundershowers which extends from a point 9 miles NNE of Sicorgus, New Jersey, along a line and 6 miles either side of the line to a point 5 miles SSW of Fonduloch. However, the radar is also picking up a squadron of Russian ICBMs… so I wouldn’t sweat the thundershowers.”

So you wonder — what’s coming next?
Well, a ‘supermoon’ tonight, for starters.

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